A High-throughput Electrospray Nozzle for Nanoparticle Production

Authors:

H. Fu, R.A. Hoerr, P.J. Ryan

Affilation:

Nanocopoeia, Inc, US

Pages:

101 - 104

Keywords:

electrospray, high throughput, nanoparticle

Abstract:

Electrospray is well-known for its capability of producing monodisperse particles with sizes ranging from a few nanometers to micrometers. Even though electrospray has been used in a wide range of research areas, its low throughput has limited widespread use of ES for industrial applications. In order to increase the throughput, building upon a design by D.R. Chen’s group (Lee et al. 2011), we designed high throughput D-series nozzles that eliminate the traditional capillary structure; instead, an open-channel architecture is used. A sheet of fluid is delivered to the spray region that consists of a series of projections, which serve as the functional “nozzlettes”. Monodisperse spherical particles with various sizes were generated by our D-series nozzle at different operational conditions. Compared with a single capillary nozzle, the throughput of our D-series nozzle is increased over 10 to 20 times. Our standard working platform contains 8 D-24 nozzles, with a throughput of over 0.5 grams of active pharmaceutical ingredient per hour. In summary, ElectroNanospray™ is a flexible, low-cost, single-step spray process that produces nanoparticles in a narrow, targeted-size distribution. Our revolutionary nozzle designs enable the scale-up capability of electrospray technology while leveraging all the advantages of traditional nozzles.